The Glarant floats above the Zember city. Jay looks down below to see the whole city littered with its complex highrise and covered by a dome like a snow globe. The Glarant flew into a glass wall and it parted to let the Glarant in.
The wall is close behind The hovercraft as it enters the city premises. The Glarant weaves through the complex building and finally arrives at one of the landing ports. They're not going to let Jay land in their base. The Glarant hovers over the side of a building that has the port opening.
The door opens up and they let Jay out. He hops down to the landing port and turns.
“About the smartwatch..”
“Just keep it,” The chief said fiddling with his smartwatch “I deleted the EOS for you, you should able to use it like a normal smartwatch ”
“Thank you..”
“My name is Roland”
“?” The chief of the operation said out of the blue. Roland catches his bewilderment and continues.
“Just have a feeling we would meet again, Have a nice day.”
The Glarant door slid closed and left the port.
Well that was ominous
Jay walks off the scare and enters the port. It was a public transport port for delivery hovercraft. Little to no checkup here since it’s a public space.Good for Jay since he might have smuggled an illegal heart implant in. Another transport also arrives right behind him. With a glance, Jay could tell that it’s top-of-the-line tech. Its sleek white design said that it’s from one of the big Companies and the letter OM along with an arrow said that it belongs to Omnicorp.
A mega-corporation that owns roughly 25% of the known Galaxy and this hovercraft isn’t from their subsidiary company either. It is from the main company that has a hellish requirement to become one of their staff.
A girl with a Ponytail steps out of the hovercraft along with a guy who Chrom out of his mind. A cyborg is holding her luggage. Never in a million years would he think he could encounter a real cyborg. Even rarer that it’s holding luggage for the woman.
It’s known that a technology that could turn you completely metal is not common in Conticus II. You couldn’t even sell your life to become one. Being a complete cyborg enjoys many benefits, enhanced thinking, super speed, super strength, and best of all a much longer life span. Seeing them as a luggage boy rubs him the wrong way.
But at the end of the day, it’s not his place to bud in. It’s not every day you get to see Omni Corp personnel so he is just curious. When that emotion wears off he quickly finds himself hungry. He still has a little bit of money left in his Bank. Not much, but enough to buy him a nutritious meal from a vending machine.
He looks nearby and sees the ORJ nutrient bar vending machine. Jay only had about 67 Gibs to his name and a million Gib debt that never got clear. No one is supposed to know that he was dead after all. He selects an item he wants and then presses his smartwatch on the big Payment Here sign.
“Thank you for your purchase! ORJ ORJ”
Jay picked up a nutrient bar that he just purchased. Peeled the cone-like plastic off the bar and chewed it into it. This one has a Flucky fruit flavor, he prefers the chocolate one but this one is on sale for 50% off for two bars. cost him 52 Gibs. He ate the whole bar in a hurry to satisfy some of his hunger but it’s not nearly enough. Jay wanted more, but his money couldn’t afford it.
Now a big question. What does he do next? Jay didn’t have any money and the only thing he was good at was building mechs. He also couldn’t land any job since he didn’t have experience in anything. The job market won’t take a nobody like him considering a million people that want a job.
Your job and your income directly link to how people treat you. People could look at your income just by your citizenship class. The C-class is on the poorer side while B class is normal people. The beggar will be in F class. Every year you have to pay a flat fee if you want to enjoy the benefits of a higher class.
The enforcer had already delivered him to District D, so he should check out his room. No one is supposed to know that he died so his room should be fine. A little check wouldn’t hurt.
He enters an elevator and squeezes himself in hoping to drop off at the 22nd floor. Jay could sense that people were looking at him judgmentally, Maybe because of the class or maybe because of the junkyard smell coming off him. Jay couldn’t care less since it wasn’t hurting him physically.
Many people soon felt relief as he left on the 22nd floor. Only traveling 4 floors up. Jay navigates the ever-expansive corridor to find his room. Soon he arrive at the metal door that has a room number carved into it.
D-22-502
He taps his smartwatch on a pad next to the door and lets it scan.
Kink
The door unlocks, and Jay is surprised and not surprised at the same time. He pushes the door open to find his garbage of a room still untouched by other people, mostly. The area where the debt collector naps him still leaves an aftermath. Like a splitting of an ocean where trash moves to the side.
His room consists of a bedroom and a toilet with a nice shower. Sad that it was ruined by his neglect. The smell of his room is not that much better than the junkyard, At least it’s not actively killing you.
[Quest - Sell a mech]
[Detail - Sell a mech of your creation]
[Reward - Upgrade token and 100 Mech points]
Like a messenger from heaven, the system gives him another quest when he needs it the most. Reading the description, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t have any mech to sell, He doubted that the one that he built in a junkyard would sell. Hell, he doubted that he could even find it in the first place.
Stolen story; please report.
Also now that he looks at it, he completely forgot that he had an upgrade token.
“System, what could I use the upgrade token for?”
[Improve System]
[Improve Body]
[Sell for 1000 mech points]
He clicks on Improve System to get a better idea.
[You could select one of 3 options]
[Expansive stats]
Get a more accurate measurement of your own body.
[Upgrade your system rank]
Upgrade system rank to support Apprentice mech designer skill set.
[Gacha]
For those who like to gamble. Spend your points here to get a random reward.
All of these look kind of useful and Jay almost immediately picks for the Gacha option, However, Jay contains himself a bit and looks at all the options he has first. [Expansive stat] looks useful if he was going to min-max his stat but with little to no explanation as to what it expands, it is a risky option.
He didn’t know what upgrade system rank meant. If he has to guess he needs it to buy a higher-rank skill. Which he didn’t need at the moment because he didn’t even qualify as an apprentice mech designer. He dropped out before he could reach that far.
[Gacha] is self-explanatory, Maybe he could get something good out of it? It’s not the best option logically but his heart is telling him to grab it.
“What about body improvement?”
[Designer’s eyes]
Make it so that you can plan your mech everywhere you go! With only your eyes.
[Mechanic body]
Better body, better mech! Improve your muscle strength and stamina, best for a hands-on designer!
[Bigger brain]
improve brain capacity to 200 making it harder to forget information.
Out of all of these options, [Designers' eyes] seem to be the best option followed closely by [Bigger brain]. He wasn’t sure what the full extent of having more brain capacity meant but having better memory would help him a lot as a designer. [Mechanic body] came in last since Jay didn’t value his own body that much.
Having seen the full extent of what he could have, Jay went back and picked [Gacha] out of the option. He couldn’t resist, his inner gambler was calling for him. He swore that he would stop before it got bad.
[Congratulations you got A new system function! You can select the option from the menu below by saying ‘System’]
Ok… that made more sense
“System”
[Stats]
[Gacha]
[Inventory]
Jay quickly selected [Gacha]
[Limted Mech Gacha newbie pack] [10 pulls]
[100 mech point]
-Pack for the newest aspiring Mech designer guaranteed to have an S-rank item! Only available to mech designers that just started!
-Require the mech designer to have a lower than apprentice mech designer rank.
-Only available for purchase 1 time.
[Normal Gacha] [1 pull]
[10 mech points]
-Pack for mech designer who likes to test their luck. May contain something valuable.
[Warning the price might be subject to change depending on your Rank]
[You could not get an item better than you rank]
Oh my Stars
Jay didn’t expect that it would hit him with a classic Gacha bait system. He didn’t think that this technology would use this kind of tactic… He will gladly fall for it! His hand presses on the pull option for the [Limited Mech Gacha newbie pack].
[Congratulations, you got…]
[Congratulations from the system x 7] [F]
[Basic cooking guide x 1] [C]
[How to make Magnet x1] [C]
[Gambler secret x 1][S]
Jay glosses over the [congratulation from the system] and goes straight for the good stuff. The one S rank item that he got. He opens his inventory and looks for it. All three new items are displayed as books in his inventory.
[Gambler secret] [S]
Embrace the Gamble and Master the Game. A gambler has to have a secret to winning, that is to play their own game. Unlock [Gambler specialization F]
Jay didn’t hesitate and used the item.
[Gambler specialization F] [150 Mechpoint] [32 brain capacity]
-In the chaotic dance of chance and strategy, the gambler transcends the realm of calculated moves. This Gambler's secret taps into the essence of unpredictability and transforms each confrontation into a high-stakes game of skill, luck, and psychological finesse.
That just sounds super cool
To a gambling addict like himself. Telling him that he could weaponize his addiction sounds like a nice gimmick to have. He would like to have it straight away But he didn’t have enough points.
“Could I sell the other stuff for points?”
[....]
Seem like a no
Jay checked out the other stuff he got and it seems that general knowledge is good to have So he uses it all.
[Brain capacity 60/100]
It’s not as painful as the foundation knowledge. The overall knowledge takes up 3 Brain capacities. Now he knew how to cook simple dishes for himself but Jay couldn’t see him using it since the cooking ingredient is rather costly.
He also learned how to make magnets, pretty cool knowledge but he didn’t know what to use them for, and again, he did not have the material to utilize the skill.
Now that he has reviewed all of this gain, his attention is now back on the quest. Last time he could scrap by since the junkyard was full of a bunch of mech parts and the one that he built was like a bizarre art piece. However, the system still registered it as a mech. Jay now laid out his options.
He just built a small mech and sold it like a really small one for ants.
Try to sell his bizarre art piece.
or build and sell a mech virtually?
Every option seems like a gamble. For the first one, he wasn’t sure it would count as Mech and he didn’t have money to buy the material. The second one has a possibility of working since the thing qualifies as a mech but he didn’t know who would buy that… thing.
The last option has a chance of not working out since the system might not be able to verify a virtually created mech. Plus a virtual machine costs money per hour. And he needed a minimum of 7 hours to cobble up the most basic mech, even then he wasn’t certain it would sell.
They all have different kinds of risks attached to them. Why can’t my life just be easier?